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Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger has been chosen to curate the Thematic Program for the 2018 edition of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

This year’s Thematic Program will focus on the true crime genre, featuring films that follow individual cases that consider the ways in which the documentary field represents “the complexities, and limitations, of the American judicial system.”

Berlinger (pictured) will draw from his past projects – including Brother’s Keeper, ParadiseLost and Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders – as well as the works of other filmmakers in the genre to explore the themes of crime and punishment.

On November 15, 1959, two men entered a small Kansas home looking for cash. They didn’t find much, but the robbery ended in one of the most notorious murders in American history. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock killed the entire Clutter family — father Herbert, mother Bonnie Mae, and children Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15—in a crime that transfixed the nation.

The infamous crime and the motives of Smith and Hickock were immortalized in Truman Capote’s 1966 nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, adapted by Hollywood a year later. But on Saturday, the case will be reopened in a two-part documentary from Joe Berlinger that focuses on the Clutters instead of their killers.

Fans of film and TV have come to recognize Berlinger’s stock-in-trade: a socially conscious approach to advocacy that is also cinematically groundbreaking. It’s won him dozens of awards and nominations, including a Best Documentary Academy Award nomination, multiple Emmy awards and nominations, prizes at the world’s top film festivals, and most recently, a 2017 International Documentary Association nomination for his latest feature documentary, “Intent to Destroy.”

EXCLUSIVE:Abramorama and Gathr Films have acquired North American theatrical rights to the Joe Berlinger documentary Intent to Destroy, a film-within-a film that centers on the Armenian genocide of 1915 and was a critical favorite at this year’s Tribeca and Hot Docs Film Festivals. Abramorama will release the film theatrically on Nov. 10 in New York and Los Angeles followed by select cities nationwide. Gathr Films will then expand the release with one-night-only event screenings through its crowd-sourced theatrical distribution platform Theatrical On Demand.

Produced by Survival Pictures (The Promise), RadicalMedia, and Third Eye Motion Picture Company in association with Bloom Project, Berlinger’s 13th feature-length documentary embeds history with the story of director Terry George’s intent to explore the reality of the genocide through his film The Promise. That includes the subsequent campaign launched by genocide deniers.

Joe Berlinger, the award-winning director behind the Paradise Lost trilogy, is working on another true crime doc for Investigation Discovery about another apparent miscarriage of justice.

Joe Berlinger

Killing Richard Glossip will premiere on ID in the US on consecutive nights beginning on Sunday March 5.

The show, produced by RadicalMedia in association with Third Eye Motion Picture Company, focuses on the 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese at a motel he owned in Oklahoma City.

Motel manager Richard Glossip, a man with no prior convictions, has always maintained his innocence in the case and yet sits on death row having been convicted.

Justin Sneed, who admitted killing the victim and whose finger prints were found in the room, cut a deal to get a life sentence instead of the death penalty by telling police Glossip hired him to do it.

Both announcements were made this afternoon during the network’s Television Critics Association press event.

“Killing Richard Glossip” dives into the 1997 Oklahoma City murder of Barry Van Treese. Glossip, a man with no prior felony convictions, has consistently maintained his innocence, insisting that he had no knowledge that anyone planned to kill Van Treese. He’s now towards the end of his death row stay. Justin Sneed, who admitted to killing the victim and whose fingerprints were found in the room, cut a deal for a life sentence instead of risking the death penalty by telling the police that Glossip hired him to do it.

For those of you just looking for the “True Crime” movie…

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